Conform

Drivers who park their cars in downtown Tavares might have been violating the city's parking ordinance without even knowing it.City officials said Wednesday that parking signs on downtown streets did not conform with what was spelled out in a dated city ordinance. Apparently, signs were changed to allow parking - or ban it - but the ordinance wasn't updated.The City Council agreed Wednesday that the easiest solution was to change the ordinance instead of changing a lot of parking signs. They unanimously agreed to the switch in the law to make it match the signs.

WASHINGTON -- Illustrating an intellectual confusion common on campuses, Vanderbilt University says: To ensure "diversity of thought and opinion" we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university's policy that forbids the groups from protecting their characteristics that contribute to diversity. Last year, after a Christian fraternity allegedly expelled a gay undergraduate because of his sexual practices, Vanderbilt redoubled its efforts to make the more than 300 student organizations comply with its "long-standing nondiscrimination policy.

LARRY GUEST certainly has taken up whatever slack I might have anticipated in the quality of sports writing when I moved to Oviedo from New York in 1978. I was brought up on Dick Young, Dan Parker, Jimmy Cannon, Bill Corum, Tommy Holmes, Harold Weismann and a lot of other great writers.I don't always agree with Guest, but he is always interesting. I did agree with his column about baseball players and drug use. The fans who buy the tickets pay these guys' salaries and are entitled to see them as individuals.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- The crime scene at 138 Griffith St. has changed in 76 years. Today it is a barber shop. In 1934, it was a tailoring and cleaning establishment owned and run by Jacob Maged, 49. With his responsibilities as a father of four, Maged should have shunned a life of crime. Instead, he advertised his criminal activity with a placard in his shop window, promising to press men's suits for 35 cents. This he did, even though President Franklin Roosevelt's New Dealers, who knew an amazing number of things -- his economic aides were not called a "Brains Trust" for nothing -- knew that the proper price for pressing a man's suit was 40 cents.

Drawing on memories from his upbringing in the segregated South, President Bill Clinton on Wednesday delivered an all-out defense for the embattled policy of affirmative action.After five months of review and apparent wavering, the president told a gathering of noted leaders in the civil rights and women's rights movement: ''Let me be clear, affirmative action has been good for America.''He argued that policies to boost minorities and women and to set aside government contracts for businesses owned by members of these groups are a ''moral imperative'' and ''a legal necessity.

Orlando and Orange County firefighters who retire after 25 or more years would receive 5 percent cost-of-living increases every three years under a House bill (HB 1309) approved by the Community Affairs Committee Thursday. The bill would overhaul the Orlando Firefighters Pension Fund to conform with new federal tax laws.

When approached about large-scale developments, the very first question county staffers should utter is: "Does it conform to our comprehensive plan?" If the answer is "no," the next statement from our hired hands should be "See ya." Choice Edwards Clermont

ISLAMIC LAW. Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq decreed Wednesday that Sharia, the Islamic legal code, would be the supreme law in Pakistan. ''All future lawmaking at the federal and provincial levels must conform to Sharia,'' he said in a televised address. He issued an ordinance empowering superior courts to strike down laws that conflict with Islamic law.

The ancient Celts saw nothing ominous about kicking off the day with a large strong drink. Inasmuch as they measured each day from dusk to dusk.That nickel in your old nickel - if you have such a collectible coin - probably comes from Ontario. Most nickel does.Item 6336C in our Love and War man's file of uncredited observations: ''You get a good marriage when the power of love overcomes the love of power.''To put up a sod house, the early homesteader on the western plains needed a half-acre of sod cut brick size for walls, poles and brush to support the roof thatch, and $2.78 worth of door hardware and stove piping.

Stationed in Washington, D.C., as an active-duty Marine 10 years ago, I found the local public-school district allowed individual schools to determine their school-dress policy: status quo, uniforms or in-between. The stipulation was that the school community would vote based upon the school's population -- one vote per student. Therefore, multiple-student families, who would bear a heavier burden if uniforms were adopted, had a voice equal to their potential outlay. Because I was the PTA president, our school principal put the process in my hands.

Question: Our condominium has uniform steel entry doors into each unit. The association has assumed the responsibility (by amendment) of maintaining and painting the exteriors of these doors. Recently, one resident replaced this steel door with a nonuniform wooden door, without seeking association approval. We would like to maintain the uniformity of our doors. How do we proceed? Answer: Your first step is to read your documents to see who is required to maintain the doors. Not all associations have the same responsibility when it comes to windows and doors.

When approached about large-scale developments, the very first question county staffers should utter is: "Does it conform to our comprehensive plan?" If the answer is "no," the next statement from our hired hands should be "See ya." Choice Edwards Clermont

In response to Geraldine King's Tuesday letter regarding our swiftly regressing city: Money, for starters, and notoriety can be held up as the primary reasons we are soon going to need to change all of our welcome signs to read, "Welcome to Orlando, the City Dump." Our various politicos refuse to enact legislation to sharply curb the growth that is causing the blight that we see around us. Most of the people who will vote for them are the ones who have moved here from other, frequently larger, cities where things are even worse.

Fifty years ago, Grace Metalious touched a cultural nerve. She published Peyton Place, about the scandals, betrayals and lusts that lurk beneath the placid surface of a New England small town. Peyton Place became the best-selling novel in American history up to that time. It inspired a movie, a TV show and, as Leonard Cassuto notes in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the modern soap opera as we know it. When critics write about Peyton Place today, they tend to see it as a premonition of the glorious achievements of the 1960s.

Very recently I was walking the Punk (Chihuahua with an attitude) dog after work, around 1 in the afternoon. The day was beautiful -- you know the kind: clear blue sky for as far as the eye could see, a gentle breeze, temperature perfect for walking in shirt sleeves. I was studying the houses, yards and various landscaping details as I walked along. Most of the lawns were close to Kelly green in color, nicely edged, hedges uniformly clipped, annuals perkily vying for attention next to wooden fences, with just a few patches of mulched monkey grass here and there, and I thought, gosh what a pleasant place to live.

U.S. Swimming is making a fashion statement. In a subtle change to rule No. 102.9, it now says a swimmer's costume must be non-transparent - and conform to the current concept of the appropriate. It makes no stipulation that suits be one piece. This was done to conform to high school, NCAA and FINA rules.''Our kids like it (two-piece). It's cooler, especially for the distance kids,'' said U.S. Swimming's Jeff Dimond.SHORT STROKESMORE THAN 400 competitors from 17 corporations will converge on Orlando International Aquatic Center on Saturday and Sunday for the Challenge Corporate Games National Championships in nine swimming events, running, throwing and kicking.

Legislation that cleared a Senate committee Wednesday would conform state law to a Florida Supreme Court decision that lifts restrictions on the right to die. The bill (CS-SB 1096), approved 5-3 by the Judiciary Committee, would expand that definition of a terminal condition to include a persistent vegetative state. The measure goes to the Appropriations Committee. A similar measure is awaiting committee action in the House.

Today, let's pay tribute to the late Solomon Asch. The renowned pioneer of social psychology isn't exactly a household name. But an experiment he performed about 50 years ago is pertinent to the hive mentality of those leaders faced with a decision on the future of a county convention center next week. Here's the gist of the experiment, a classic in the study of conformity: Subjects were asked to judge lines of different lengths and pick which matched a single "control" line. The answer was obvious.